“Sorry, Carly,” she said, looking at me with shame in her eyes. “I had to cut the social studies lesson.” It was a Friday night. A friend of mine, “Ms. Kyles,” who teaches 4th grade, was sharing the stressful week she had. Generally, Ms. Kyles indicated, she had a good group of students – friendly and eager to learn. However, they often get a little rambunctious, causing them to disregard classroom procedures…until kindly reminded by their teacher in the hushed, forceful tone that is scarier than yelling. This week, it went beyond just horseplay. Several of the boys had targeted another student, picking on him relentlessly. To address the issue, Ms. Kyles had to spend some time talking to the whole class about their behavior. Unfortunately, she told me, this meant cutting into their designated social studies time.
It’s hard to blame her – social studies is already competing for time with other subjects in the elementary grades, sometimes getting as little as 15-30 minutes, if any time at all! After I had finished publicly shaming Ms. Kyles through “boos” and other taunts, I asked her how she decided to address the issue.
First, she had the students all review class rules established at the beginning of the school year:
- Respect others in all ways
- Be kind
- Give hope
- Love even when it’s hard
- Be responsible
- Be proactive
- Take care of your things
- Own your choices
These rules are reflected in the class mission statement, which the class wrote together. Our class mission is: to treat others the way the way we would want to be treated, to give others hope, be yourself, and own your choices.
As she individually reviewed each rule, which all focus on responsible individual and group behavior, Ms. Kyles asked students if their behavior was in accordance with each rule.
“What does it mean to ‘be kind’ to our classmates?”
“Is it kind to see someone who is different from you and have your buddies all make fun of them? Is that kind? Why not?”
“Did you own your choice in being ugly towards others?”
“What do you need to do to ‘own that choice’?”
“Then we discussed what new rules we needed to have in order for our class to be respectful of one another. So…..no time for social studies.”
“What?” I exclaimed! “That is 100% social studies! What a great lesson in democracy and citizenship.”
“No, democratic systems are next week.”
Though Ms. Kyles had not yet gotten to her curriculum that was explicitly on democracy, she was teaching her students democratic skills and attitudes through this class meeting.
Ms. Kyles was encountering an issue democracies face – creating and following rules that foster respect and responsibilities to one another. Instead of just yelling at them or applying punishments, she had them engage in a dialogue concerning their established rules, appropriate consequences, and biggest of all, the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen. Teaching for citizenship wasn’t isolated to civics curriculum.
This is an important lesson in democratic education – and one that, for obvious reasons, can’t just be dictated to students through direct teach. To teach for democracy, teachers must teach democratically. Democratic classroom procedures can certainly be applied to all grade levels. The C3Teacher inquiry collection has several elementary-level IDMs that provide an inquiry framework turning the classroom into a lab for democratic processes.
Though not all attempts at teaching democratically will necessarily be successful, Ms. Kyles reported that the students independently decided to “own their choices” and apologized to the student they had previously teased. They also invited him to work with them during a group activity.
Ms. Kyles and the students even decided to add a new rule: Be a good citizen.
Elementary inquiries for a democratic classroom:
